One as Other, is a wonderful poetry collection written in a distinctly minimalist style. Focused on brevity and precise lyrical diction, the poems cover many different subjects from being focused on gardening and nature imagery, to more worldly and atmospheric poems, to the more political, philosophical, and religious. Distinctly non-narrative, most of deNiord’s poems instead explore the emotional effect of an accumulation of lines through precise diction, musicality, and subversive movements. There’s also this incredible musicality to the collection through the use of alliteration and internal rhyme. deNiord also explores the effect of small subversive movements within his poems, that give a richness to his work. The reader needs to be paying attention, and those small movements serve as a way to introduce surprise and a tonal change.
Advance Praise for One As Other
“Chard DeNiord’s newest book, One as the Other, moves the reader from fugitive places of disquieted silence to exuberant nature where leaves, like so many tongues/with too much to say, finally lead to ecstatic awakenings. Not that these transitions are easy. We are reminded that this world suffers from pain, loss, and rupture on a minute-to-minute basis: My pen grows too heavy to lift/when I try to write it,/There is nothing that everyone doesn’t already know. It takes a voice deeply rooted in the complex interweavings of contradictory sensations to breathe life into the unknown. With subtle lyricism, DeNiord points us past near-elegiac compassion toward a belief in infinite, beautiful sanctuaries where No song is wrong or voice off key.”
—Dzvinia Orlowsky, author of Those Absences Now Closest; Bad Harvest, and Eccentric Days of Hope and Sorrow (2022 Griffin International Poetry Prize finalist in Translation)
“Brief, spare, stripped of inessentials yet also expansive, the poems in Chard deNiord’s One as Other are the verbal equivalent of a Zen master’s paintings seemingly dashed off one after the other with quickness and flair made possible by a lifetime of deliberate practice. With a naturalness of expression that’s like ‘writing on air as if it were paper,’ he enacts Paul Eluard’s assertion that ‘there is another world, but it’s in this one,’ capturing the fleeting moment as it expands into something larger, a line or passage flipping the latch that opens the poem like a trapdoor, giving us sudden access to that other world and a deeper connection to this one.”
—Jeffrey Harrison, the author of several collections of poetry, including Into Daylight, among others
About the Poet
Chard deNiord is the author of nine books of poetry, most recently Westminster West (Tupelo Press, 2024), One As Other (Green Writers Press), In My Unknowing (University of Pittsburgh Press 2020), Interstate (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), and The Double Truth (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011). He is also the author of two books of interviews with eminent American poets: Sad Friends, Drowned Lovers, Stapled Songs, Conversations and Reflections on 20th Century Poetry (Marick Press, 2011) and I Would Lie To You If I Could (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018). deNiord is Professor Emeritus of English and Creative Writing at Providence College, and co-founder of The New England College MFA Program. From 2015 to 2019 he served as poet laureate of Vermont. He lives in Westminster West, Vermont with his wife, Liz.
The cover art is by Liz Hawkes deNiord, the poet’s wife. Her painting and pottery are inspired by meditative attention to the smallest and largest “things.” Large, spacious abstract paintings as well as paintings in hand and wheel-thrown pots convey the inner workings of the artist’s imagination.
SPECS
One As Other
Poetry
Paperback Original
Trim Size: 6 x 8
Page Count: 80
Price: $15.95 (CA $20.95)
ISBN: 979-8-9904801-6-2
Publication Date: OCTOBER 8, 2024
Distributor: IPG/Chicago, Ingram, Bookshop.org
Rights sold: All rights available.
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